


non sum qualis eram (i am not such as i was)

by houfukuseisaku



Category: Evillious Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Isekai... But It's a Canon Character Waking Up In An AU Version Of Canon, Metafiction, Multi, Roleswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25222390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houfukuseisaku/pseuds/houfukuseisaku
Summary: She doesn’t know the reason for that chosen moniker; truth be told, it feels like her body has, for a split-second, become some sort of clockwork doll, dancing for the one who wound its key. But the minute the word—thename—her namerolls off her tongue and passes through her lips, a sense of rightness, a feeling ofyes, that’s correctspreads through her thoughts like ink in water.…Huh. Well,that’scertainly different.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. Woke Up In A Parallel Universe And All I Got Was A Headache

The last thing she sees before the lightning meets its mark is the face of her killer.

A lonely, desperate, crazed mask of a grin ghoulishly stretched beneath eyes shining overbright with terror.

_Medvedi ubit,_ Meta mentally repeats, delirious mirth echoing everywhere in her head and nowhere everywhere else. _Oh, Eve, you delusional fool. You better take good care of my children or else I’ll—_ she doesn’t say, doesn’t finish the thought before she’s lost to the darkness.

* * *

When she opens her eyes again, there’s a mirror reflecting her face back to her, upside-down. Meta blinks. The reflection blinks, slightly delayed. There’s a scowl on the mirror’s face, one that she herself isn’t wearing.

Meta blinks again, and when the scowl deepens further it punches the air out of her as she realizes what’s wrong:

Her reflection looks… young. Well, not _that_ young—just a little bit younger than she feels, certainly. It looks like how she thinks she felt a year or two ago. Before. Before the project, before her children—

“Where are my children.” She says, blunt, picking herself up from where she’s laid down upon what looks like a bed on a good day, a wooden pallet with some straw on it on a bad day. _Where?_ It’s a demand more than a question. Her reflection rights itself upwards and stares at her with those same cold eyes; it only serves to agitate Meta further. “Where are Hansel and Gretel.”

“We found you alone. There wasn’t anyone else around; certainly no children.” Her reflection sneers, like she’s personally offended at the thought of her almost-lookalike’s progeny. “Before you accuse us of anything else, why don’t you thank us for _saving your life_ , hm?”

_Us?_ Meta swivels her head around, taking in the room utilitarian barrenness, how familiar it is. Apocalypse’s base in Calgaround; one of its many rooms among its many twisting corridors. She remembers using them as makeshift lodgings-and-or-barracks for her amassed Red Devotees.

And there, quietly sitting on a chair in the corner, is Pale. Pale in his original adult body, not the child one Seth transferred him into. Pale, looking at her with eyes that hold more amusement than affection. Catching her stare, he gives Meta a wry smirk, turning his attention to her—the younger Meta.

“I didn’t know you had an older sister, Meta.” He chuckles, rising in volume when Meta— _his_ Meta, she realizes—sputters in indignation.

Meta meets Meta’s eyes, wildfire against wall of ice.

“Who are you?” Meta asks.

“I’m you, apparently.” Meta answers, enjoying the look of disoriented displeasure on Meta’s face.

“Nonsense! Did Seth send you here?” Meta asks.

“Is that a joke? You know as well as I do how much we _hate_ him.” Meta answers, enjoying the look of confused commiseration on Meta’s face.

“That’s—well, we can’t _both_ be Meta! You have to pick another name.” Meta all but screams.

_Was I always like this,_ Meta doesn’t say. What she does say instead is: “Hm… Malice, then. Call me Malice.”

* * *

She doesn’t know the reason for that chosen moniker; truth be told, it feels like her body has, for a split-second, become some sort of clockwork doll, dancing for the one who wound its key. But the minute the word—the _name_ — _her name_ rolls off her tongue and passes through her lips, a sense of rightness, a feeling of _yes, that’s correct_ spreads through her thoughts like ink in water.

Malice it is, then.

It does feel like she’s taking this far too easily for what it is, this strange situation that she’s woken up to. But Malice finds her thoughts hazy, numbed, telling her to _don’t worry about it, you’ll understand soon enough,_ so she doesn’t question anything. Maybe this is all a dream—a dying dream, even. Maybe.

Right now, Meta’s gawking at her like she’s grown a second head. Even Pale is scrutinizing her with shameless curiosity, looking her over like he can pick her apart with his bespectacled eyes alone. She’s no closer to finding out where her children are, but for now a bigger mystery occupies her mind.

“Fine, don’t answer me.” Malice sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. “But can I at least know what year it is?”

“13th Gear.” Pale says, leaning forward, glasses glinting in the light. “Third Rotation, give or take a few Teeth. I don’t bother to keep a close eye on the date, don’t see a point in it. Not like we keep any appointments, ha.”

“Good enough.”

13th Gear, 3rd Rotation. 8th Tooth is—was—is when she razed—razes?—the village of Nemu, as revenge for the attack on Merrigod. After that was when that scientist, Adam, and that witch, Eve, left for the capital city Alicegrad. Malice doesn’t quite know the details, but she knows that Eve’s twins were—will be—stillborn.

So then, why is Meta here and not preparing for Nemu?

Meta gives her a funny look; she belatedly realizes that she’s voiced her thoughts out loud. Whoops.

“Why would I be going to Nemu?” Meta scoffs, turning up her nose at the idea. “I have to stay here and prepare for something far greater than revenge, after all.”

_Something far greater than revenge?_ Malice wracks her brain for any such reason, dredging up what she recalls of her own version of events—because surely, she’s somehow been transported into the past, and furthermore into the past of some alternate history, some _parallel universe_ —and comes up with nothing. For as long as she remembers, her sole motivation for most things had been _revenge_ , plain and simple.

“Am I allowed to know what it is?”

Pursing her lips, Meta’s eyes flicker over to Pale; not that she has to ask permission from him, equals as they are, but simply because she wants to know what he thinks. Whether to trust this amnesic stranger wearing her face, or not.

He shrugs. “She can’t stop us either way. Go ahead.”

Meta grins, wide enough to nearly cleave her face in twain, baring her teeth and ambitions alike. Malice remembers thinking that it'd make for a useful intimidation tactic, that terrifying rictus; now she sees that it only makes her look like an overexcited child, really.

“Soon,” Meta croons in a sing-song voice, arms spread wide, “Soon, I’ll be inoculated with the God Seed. I’ll give birth to the Twins of God and, with Levia-Behemo’s power under my control, I’ll destroy everything in this world until only ashes remain!”

* * *

…Huh. Well, _that’s_ certainly different.


	2. Can You Really Call Us The Same Person If We Have Different Backstories?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **content warning: mention of meta's canonical childhood backstory, and all that implies. read with caution.**
> 
> and here we start to go into the ethics of canon divergence. the meta of theseus.

It isn't often that Malice finds herself speechless, but there's a first time for everything.

She’ll just. Keep quiet, then. Silence, as much as an answer as it isn’t, because honestly, what can she say to that?

Meta keeps staring at her with that too-wide grin, waiting for a response; when she doesn’t get one, her smile curdles at the edges, souring like spoilt milk. Malice ticks an eyebrow up at such an open display of weakness. Whatever circumstances this strange world inflicted upon its Meta has made her far too emotional, open and raw and as readable as a book, notations scribbled in its margins, handwritten.

Or perhaps Malice too was that way in her origin world, and simply finds it easy to read “herself”—especially in the flesh, rather than in a mirror.

“…Well?” Meta prompts, tongue sharp. “Are you so terrified that you have no words?”

Gods, she really is seeking her validation, isn’t she? Was _she_ like that, too? Before?

“You seem to have quite the high opinion of me.” Malice deflects. “Tell me who you think I am, first, and maybe I’ll give you an answer.”

Lips curling further, twists into a sneer. Meta jerks her head up again, like she’s trying to regain the upper hand by regarding Malice as someone-something beneath her. A worthless piece of trash under the heel of her shoe, meant to be ground down into dust.

“A ghoul child, for sure. Maybe _another_ empty clone he hid from me, kept frozen until he figured out how to fill you with someone-something, and now you’re here to be his hands and eyes.”

Reasonable guesses. Should she go with them, instead of telling an unacceptable truth? Seth’s creations don’t necessarily have access to Seth’s knowledge of the multiverse—furthermore Malice remembers losing her memories after a fall from a cliffside, only regaining them near the end—but, Pale. She doesn’t know if this Pale knows. Scratch that, she doesn’t know if _any_ Pale knows.

It’s a sobering realization that she doesn’t-didn’t really know Pale at all. She loves him—loved the him that she knew, the him from her world—and knows that he loved-loves her. But did she know of his connection to Seth? Did she know that the one she loved and the one she loathed were just-barely-removed from one-and-the-same; copy and copied?

What a conundrum. Best to lock it away and hide the key for now; she has more pressing matters to attend to, like the glare Meta’s giving her.

“Reasonable guesses.” Malice parrots her earlier thoughts. “But would you believe me if I say I’m a you from an alternate future?”

As expected, Meta lets out a barrage of rather creative expletives, incredulity sharpening her every word. On the other hand, Pale’s expression turns slightly less cheerful, slightly more contemplative. After a few more moments of mostly ignoring Meta’s colourful commentary, he lifts a hand, to which she immediately falls silent.

“Prove it, then.” Smiling, Pale leans back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “If you’re really a Meta from a parallel universe, as you claim to be, then you must know something that only Meta knows. She confirms it, only then do we figure out what to do with you. Otherwise…”

The way his eyes narrow just that little bit, almost imperceptibly—murder would be a mercy, it seems to say. Malice doesn’t need to guess. If this Pale is the same as her Pale, then. Murder would _really_ be a mercy. Raisa had called it the Red Shoe Parade, the pride and joy of her many, many torture methods. A cruel dance to the death.

But, hm. Something only Meta would know. Malice licks her lips; she doesn’t… exactly want to recall _those_ memories, or make this Meta recall them. If they share the same past, that is, but that should be a given. Right?

“My first kill was a farmer.”

Pale nods, but Meta shakes her head. “That doesn’t count. Pale knows. Tell me something only _we_ would know.”

Is this a challenge? How haughty. Fine, then. If it’s what Meta wants, Malice will cut her where it hurts.

“The farmer… did things to me.” Whispering. But this deserves more than a whisper, doesn’t it? It deserves a scream. _Louder._ “To us. Touched us. Took advantage of us. All night. Every night.” What kind of face is she wearing, right now? She can’t see anything; her eyes have glazed over, glassy, unseeing. With tears, perhaps.

She wonders what kind of face Meta is wearing, right now. She asked for this. Right?

Malice doesn’t realize she’s kept talking until she finally runs out of things to say, until she feels hollowed out. An empty container, begging to be filled with something, _anything_.

When she looks up, Meta’s eyes are wide with horror. That… pisses her off. Twisting her fingers into the fabric of her skirt to prevent herself from doing anything stupid, like choking her past self with her own hands maybe, Malice laughs. It isn’t a nice laugh, jagged and cold like cracked ice-glass.

“Is that what you wanted to hear? The truth? That we’re damaged goods?”

“I… you… that’s—”

Meta seems at a loss for words to say. Which, isn’t that funny? She’d been such a mouthy bitch until just a moment ago. Is it self-loathing if you hate a parallel universe version of yourself?

“That’s _awful_.” Pale says, after a moment or two of suffocating silence. “If that’s… what happened to you, then. I’m glad your Pale told you to kill him. He deserved it.”

Steady words, meant to reassure her. But it only makes her blood run cold in her veins.

He said “your Pale”. Not “I”.

Malice doesn’t like what that implies.

“Don’t say it like you didn’t tell her to kill him.” She’s seething now. How could they? How dare they?! “Don’t tell me you haven’t been through it yourself!”

“I, it’s true that the farmer abused me, but not—in _that_ way…!”

When Meta looks at her with those eyes full of pity, it feels like the shadows have swallowed her whole.

This Meta, this world’s Meta—she hadn’t gone through what Malice went through. She hadn’t suffered like she had. She hadn’t had her personality irrevocably shaped by that cruel experience, forcefully awakened to her base instincts, her ravenous desire for actual affectionate love birthed from having her innocence stolen from her so early in her life.

Malice laughs. It isn’t a nice laugh. It’s not even a bad laugh. It’s high-pitched and hateful and wheezy and whistling like a kettle about to burst.

Can this Meta really call herself “Meta” if she hadn’t suffered the way Meta had?!

Malice chokes on a dying giggle, going abruptly quiet, head hanging limp and low. When she feels a hand on her shoulder, gentle yet hesitant and so, so unfair… her vision clouds over with red.

* * *

Threatening to tear open at the seams, Malice throws her head back and _screams_.

**Author's Note:**

> heehee, another au from feya houfuku aerforce, and edited as usual by the lovely seisaku! this fic is more meant as a silly little side project, nothing as big as astrainc or maswap. we dont plan to continue beyond oss arc because that would require far too much butterfly-wrangling and nail-hammering to even begin to plot with. like always, thanks for read!


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